Venezuela Next Up To Try To Censor The Internet
from the good-luck,-hugo dept
Having just criminalized video games the government doesn't like, it looks like Hugo Chavez is looking to have Venezuela be the next country to massively censor the internet."The Internet cannot be something open where anything is said and done. No, every country has to apply its own rules and norms,"Of course, it seems that the "rules and norms" that Chavez wants are "no criticizing me."
"We have to act. We are going to ask the attorney general for help, because this is a crime. I have information that this page periodically publishes stories calling for a coup d'etat. That cannot be permitted,"Notice the problem here. Chavez's real complaint is with an organization calling for a coup -- but his response is to suggest that special laws need to be placed on all internet communications. There's a disconnect there which doesn't make much sense. If you want to make it illegal to support the overthrow of the government, that's one thing -- but that's different than focusing on laws about the internet. The internet is just a communication mechanism.
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Filed Under: censorship, hugo chavez, venezuela
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nerd rage?
All this will do is add fuel to the fire, just like a takedown notice.
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The guy who's running the show is trying to close down an avenue of communication to prevent a coup.
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Given his history, particularly in having to fight off coups that may have had foreign involvement, you'd kind of have to expect him to be a bit paranoid...
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> to accomplish in north america for years?
Umm... no.
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Ban the messenger, not the company that provided the paper he wrote the message on.
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Chavez is an idiot
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Re: Chavez is an idiot
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Re: Re: Chavez is an idiot
This is a meaningless statement. I could easily fly to the moon, except that it is impossible with gravity, lack of oxygen, and exposure to the elements.
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Re: Re: Chavez is an idiot
Only someone who has never experienced communism can let such a sentence slip out of his mind.
I suggest you buy a ticket to your nearest communist, totalitarian country and tell us how great it us when you come back.
Yeah, right - you probably won't be able to come back.Not a lot of freedom in those communist countries.
Living in a communist country is like living in hell.
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Re: Re: Re: Chavez is an idiot
You're missing his point. In the classical Marx/Lenin sense, there IS no communist country for him to "fly to". You were more correct in calling them totalitarian systems. A true communist society HAS no government or national expression, along with no class structure. In Marxist theory, a totalitarian government over the proliteriat is supposed to be the transition from monarcy/capitalism INTO communism. What nations like Venezuela and China are doing is essentially suspending that transition eternally in order to retain power.
In other words, States like China and Venezuela are every much the antithesis of Marxist theory that capitalism is....
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anyway, the problem is that thanks to the USSR (and china), communism has become synonymous with totalitarian rule,poverty, mediocrity and terror against the civilian population.Tens of millions have been murdered in the name of Communism.
The communism you are talking about exists in a small number of books and most people have not read them. For most, communism is what happened in Russia and that's what we have to refer to when using the term in public discourse.
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Several Inuit tribes in northern Canda, for example, operate without recognizing the Canadian govt. as their own, and have implemented communism with fair success.
Bottom line, as was stated before, communism is a pipe dream when attempted on any scale in line with the size of modern statehood...
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What about the Israeli kibbutzim?
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I'll try to find more, but it's kind of tough because half of these tribes have probably never HEARD of the word "communism", they just happen to practice it. Most would refer to their structure as "tribalism", although many argue that tribalism is simply a primitive form of communism (though I would argue that's exactly what REAL communism is SUPPOSED to be)!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tribalism
From what I understand of the Kibbutz society in Israel, they haven't practiced as a true commune since the Brittish Mandate. In fact, I seem to remember that when they moved from agriculture to technology, they privatized pretty much everything, which would be the antithesis of the communal or tribal structure.
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Privatization on kibbutzim started in earnest in the 1990s. But it is true that throughout their history there were varying degrees of communality. For instance, a very big issue was made over allowing kids to sleep with their families at night or keeping them in a communal boarding house for all kids.
I agree that real communism is supposed to be like tribalism. except that sophisticated, very aware and developed (and cynical, scarred) modern people cannot revert back to the original tribalism. Communism was supposed to do that but Marx's (and Engle's) understanding of the human psyche turned out to be pretty poor...
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What about the Israeli kibbutzim?
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Re: Chavez is an idiot
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Chavez is an idiot
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yet there is total disconnect here about copyright and patent law. you find extreme examples and call for the whole system to be redone. total disconnect.
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as for extreme examples, IP hindering progress is the RULE, not the exception. As I already noted, we can come up with more examples of bad patents than you can come up with examples of good patents. There is little to no evidence that IP helps innovation and plenty of evidence suggesting the opposite. The harm IP causes to society isn't the exception, it is the RULE.
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Can anyone say c o m m u n i s m?
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Re: Can anyone say c o m m u n i s m?
In both cases you had the CIA and other US govt. organizations proactively attempting to overthrow standing governments via inside coups. One of our country's favored tactics to accomplish this is to inundate a foreign country's citizens with propoganda to enflame rebellion. What better way to accomplish this in modern times than a free and open worldwide internet? In the case of both Cuba and Venezuela, you had CIA agents actively involved with those taking arms against Castro/Chavez.
I'm not saying what he's doing is right, but understanding the historical context makes this action more understandable....
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Another part of the problem is that the rebels met with the US govt. at the White House prior to the coup attempt coupled with the assertion that CIA agents were on hand during the coup directing the rebels....
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Jee... why does this seem so familiar. Well, I am sure it is nothing. Let me send of an email I know that Carnivore will catch, then head over to a local flight and have my laptop and body searched on prodded before having to display my realID with all my data and get into a GPS enabled car so that I can pay proper road use tax.
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It's obviously...
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Censorship
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This is stupid...
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Intense
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